Tuesday, July 27, 2010

What's to Come

So...The Big Pretentious Movie Summer is in full swing. I've added eleven films to the list. They are:

Leaving Las Vegas
- Mike Figgis (1995)*
Autumn Sonata - Ingmar Bergman (1978)
Before Sunrise - Richard Linklater (1995)*
Before Sunset - Richard Linklater (2004)
Birth - Jonathan Glazer (2004)+
Trouble the Water - Tia Lessin and Carl Deal (2008/2009)
The Class - Laurent Cantet (2008)
Toy Story 2 - John Lasseter (1999)
Blade Runner - Ridley Scott (1982)
Morvern Callar - Lynne Ramsay (2002)*
You Can Count on Me - Kenneth Lonergan (2000)

*Films I've already viewed, though they haven't been added to the official list.
+Films I need to re-watch

I've also omitted some films from the list, some for complicated reasons, others for logistical reasons, all of which will be viewed at some point. They are:

Life is Sweet - Mike Leigh (1993)*
Topsy Turvy - Mike Leigh (1999)*
Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice - Paul Mazursky
The Last Detail - Hal Ashby (1973)
Deconstructing Harry - Woody Allen (1997)
Dangerous Liaisons - Stephen Frears (1988)
American Graffiti - George Lucas (1973)+
The Mission - Roland Joffé (1986)
Harvey - Henry Koster (1951)
Wonder Boys - Curtis Hanson (2000)

*I need to find copies of these films somewhere. I still have yet to find a copy of Safe - Todd Haynes (1995), but I think I'll purchase that one.

+One of the whitest people I've ever met with very middlebrow tastes in film and culture in general described this movie as "Kind of overly-nostalgic, dated and a bit too cute." I'll watch it someday, but the clock is ticking and that comment took my already tepid expectations and submerged them in a liquid nitrogen tank.

So, with the new total (adding 11, subtracting 10), that means the total is 156, rather than 155.

Also, towards the end of the year, sometime before the Third Annual Pretentious Movie Awards, I'll be completing my list of best 100 favorite films of the 2000s. I know it was the in-vogue thing to do it last year, when the aughts actually ended, but doing it at the end of 2010 has its advantages. Firstly, I have enough distance from 2009 that I know which films from that list will be in the best of the decade. I will also be doing a list of the top 20 performances in the four acting categories (leading/supporting for male and female) as well as my top five directors of the decade and (just because I can't avoid schaudenfraude) the top 10 overrated films of the decade.

Peace, Love and Pretension.

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